With summer around the corner, you’ve probably heard people around you saying, “I have to lock in for the summer bod!” They frantically scour Tiktok for women telling them how they changed their life in only 30 days, and that you can do it, too! Why do people only want to seem to get “healthy” when summer’s around the corner? Because they want to look good in that swimsuit they’ve always dreamed of wearing.
My first problem with this whole mindset is the normalcy of saying you can only look good if you’re skinny. There are constant reminders from adults and teenagers alike that if you didn’t eat well today, then you didn’t do a good job. If you didn’t burn off those calories you consumed, then you aren’t good. You’re doing a bad job if you went over your calorie limit, and you especially did a bad job if what you’re eating isn’t “good food”.
Labeling food as good and bad is not effective for anyone. It just makes people feel guilty when they eat this “bad” food, or it makes them feel like they could’ve done a better job when they eat “good” food.
Can we not just eat when we’re hungry, when something sounds yummy, or when we’re out with friends? It’s not helpful to ourselves if our mindset is that if we aren’t this weight, then we won’t look good.
My second problem is that people only seem to want to be healthy before summer. Why is that? Because we want to be skinny in the summer, and if you’re not skinny, you’re not healthy, right?
Wrong. You can be healthy and fat. You can be healthy and short. You can be healthy and tall, stocky, lanky, curvy, fit, petite, chubby, or skinny. But people don’t really care about being healthy for summer. They care about being skinny, which doesn’t always mean healthy.
Having nothing but three Red Bulls a day is not healthy. Telling yourself you’re doing it for summer is not healthy. Telling yourself that you should only try to fit the ever present, ever harmful standard of being just the right amount of skinny is not healthy.
My final problem is that everyone with this mindset is not thinking about bettering themself. They’re thinking about what other people’s perception of them is, or what other people look like compared to themselves. This mindset is fleeting. You don’t have a solid reason for bettering yourself when that reason is to prove yourself to other people. That’s why most people actually don’t “lock in for the summer bod”, and instead end up feeling worse about themselves than when they started.
Then we say to ourselves, don’t worry. I’ll do better next year.
Better does not mean trying to achieve an impossible standard that has been around forever! Better means being better to yourself and your body.
Trying to be healthy is not seasonal because it shouldn’t matter what you look like if your real goal is to be healthy. What should matter is how you feel about it and the desire to actually do something about your life if you’re unhappy with it.
